Samuel Steinhouse, BPS Board Chair, called the meeting to order at 5:01pm with roll call.

Danielle Eisenberg, Chair, School Boards called the Schools Board meeting to order at 5:01pm with roll call.

BPS Board Votes to approve the October 19, 2022 Joint Board Meeting minutes. Samuel Steinhouse motioned for approval of the October 19, 2022 Joint Board Meeting minutes. Jennifer Howard so moved, Danielle Eisenberg seconded, and all were in favor. Danielle Eisenberg motioned for approval of the October 19, 2022 Joint BPS Meeting minutes. Cynthia Tancer so moved, and Linda Zucca seconded, and all were in favor. Motion carried.

Sam Steinhouse provided a quick update to the Board on the health insurance matter from the last Board meeting regarding delegating the matter to the Board Chair as to a decision if we should go self-insured or not. A decision was made (working with Doug and Danielle) by Management to stay with the current MMO and therefore nothing for the Board chair to approve outside the ordinary. We may considered a decision regarding this matter for next year.    

None.

John Zitzner provided the update highlighting the following:

• Written update provided in the Board materials
• Staff Bash held on November 11 – great success and thanking everyone; shared a video of staff
• Largest tour in history on November 10th – around 30 people attended
• BASH is underway - scheduled for Friday, April 28, 2023;
• Community Luncheon moved from January 20 to February 17 at the Hilton; Dr. Stephanie Sidden, Interim Superintendent of Public Instruction/ODE will be the Keynote Speaker
• Fought hard to keep the high quality dollars; State agreed not to count the two bad years
• Search underway for the Chief Alumni Officer

• New Hires
  • Welcomed and introduced Denise Rice-Ali, new CTO
  • New COO – Megan Johnson; no longer interim
  • Jayah Watters- Clark, MD of Communications
  • Update - will be contracting directly with Juliet Kaye as Chief of Staff until May 2024
  • Search underway for MD of ESE
• Mission, Vision RFP
  • Posted RFP last week through Catalyst Ed; expect to select a firm and get started early in January

• Review of Stabilizing and Executing – Oriented towards:
  • Academic Achievement – making sure to reduce the number of scholars who are two or more grades below
  • Family Satisfaction – scholar retention
  • Fiscal Sustainability – making sure we are regularly monitoring/ensure the budget has been approved 
  • Review of Cross Functional/Functional Stabilization slide

John McBride provided the updated highlighting the following:

• Currently have three schools as vulnerable due to: staff culture; staff vacancies; teacher/Leadership capacity; and Student Culture
• Without intervention, schools may shift into untenable or unsafe scenarios for scholars and staff;
• Overview of Leadership Team Planning -  really no quick fix; making sure we are stabilizing; action plan: to stabilize our most vulnerable schools through strong coaching, support with the Goal to build the school based capacity to ensure a stronger start in January 2023; and in the Fall
• Review of Phases in place to address these vulnerable schools: Phase 1 – Inclusive Action Planning; Phase 2 – Staff Investment and Training; and Phase 3 – Monitoring and Execution
• Review of level of details with steps, documents, etc.,  to make sure we have alignment of the what we are doing

Family Partnerships Office: Priorities – J. McBride

• Provided an update on the vision, role, and priorities of the Family Partnerships Office; priorities are to improve family relations, experience, and communication; biggest concern now is we don’t communicate effectively or enough; we are now starting to build out the data and overall systems to track our family office communications; data we are tracking include the topics, trends, and resolutions; 

Family Partnerships Office: Withdrawal Data– A. McRae

• Shared the withdrawal information of schools since September 1; total of 91 students (3 withdrawals per each day of school); most withdrawals are from our Glenville campus; 62% withdrawals are from Middle school – 5th  & 7th grade have more withdrawals than all of K-4 withdrawals combined; drivers of withdrawal include: transportation (24%) and Safety (20%) are the largest driver of withdrawals

R. Johnson provided the update supplemented with a PowerPoint Presentation highlighting the following:

• Presentation provided in the board materials
• Review of Scholar population – 1st day of school; students who never showed; and showed and left; and added back-in; will continue to track and understand who these scholars are and why they are here
• Review of Attendance/Suspensions – varies by school/grades

A. McRae provided the update highlighting the following:

• Survey provided in the Board materials
• Surveyed school leadership on NAT supports – 80% of principals, deans, counselors, social workers provided feedback
• An average of 86% of respondents selected either agree of strongly agree for every Likert scale question
• By department, this ranged from 97% to 72%

Kickoff of the Breakthrough 2030 Planning Session begins next week – Doug will talk more; and starting our SY24 Budget Kickoff 

Facilities Contract – M. Johnston provided an overview of the KPM facilities contract highlighting the following:

• Just signed a 3.5 year agreement with KPM (our current provider for Facilities management)
• Conducted RFPs this summer into fall; received eight total bids; of the eight narrowed down to three; KPM was second in terms of cost; all details included in the Board materials

Doug Mangen/Andrew Lee/Linda Zucca

Finance Committee Updates

October 2022 Financial Reports – D. Mangen shared the Schools and BPS highlights from the October 2022 financial reports included in the Board materials.

Updates for Schools/BPS:

• Provided an overview of the Projected Core Program Net Income of -($14M); have money to cover the deficit and will be covered by one time revenue; we can afford to cover this year on a one-time basis but not year after year
• Stabilizing is not cheap
• Have to be careful about budgeting correctly going forward; making a turn as quickly as possible

Resolutions to Approve the October 2022 Financial Reports

Action of All School Boards – D. Eisenberg raised approval of the October 2022 Schools Financial Reports.  Linda Zucca so moved, Cynthia Tancer seconded, and all were in favor. Motion carried.

Action of BPS Board – S. Steinhouse raised approval of the October 2022 BPS Financial Reports.  Andrew Lee so moved, Paul Harris seconded, and all were in favor. Motion carried.

D. Eisenberg provided the update stating the Committee met and dug deeply in to the Family Partnership Office update and the survey data. From a Committee standpoint, we are focused on building the Committee out a bit more to add some capacity and skills in January as we start planning for next year.

J. Howard provided the update welcoming Sanjay to the BPS Board. The Governance Committee met last week to discuss potential Board members, our current committee membership, and board terms ending in 2023 (there are four). Sam and Jennifer will be in conversations after the Holidays to see if Board members would like to renew. We are currently recruiting for the Academic Committee as the Committee only has two members; and one community member. A short-term fix could potentially be having current board members, who have the capacity, to potentially sit on two committees for the remainder of the SY and also look at some community members to serve on the Committee. The Committee still has a plan to add a HR /DEI Committee and if you have any recommendations to let Jennifer know.  S. Steinhouse added that due to an increase in her work load Kristen San Marco will have to step down from the Board.    

P. Harris provided the update stating Laura Mimura has joined the CEO Committee. The committee met on November 30 with Ralph for the sole purpose of reviewing the CEO assessment results and will discuss further in Executive Session. 

Action of All School Boards – D. Eisenberg raised approval of the School Consent Agenda. Linda Zucca so moved, Alan Kopit seconded, and all were in favor. Motion carried.

Action of BPS Board – S. Steinhouse raised approval of the BPS Consent Agenda noting there was a third item that was removed so only have two items remaining: Facilities Management Contract with KPM and Covid19 matter.  Andrew Lee so moved, Alan Kopit seconded, and all were in favor. Motion carried.

M. Rado provided an overview/background on the Fall Site Visit stating the report was included in the Board materials. He noted that this fall we only talked to teachers, asking questions around how are you helping kids who are struggling and how are you identifying kids who may have a disability or do have a disability. Both the classroom observations and focus groups are not rated or scored. Lesley Wilkins-Valentine then provided an update on the focus groups held, SPED and RTI stating there were no major concerns. Any additional concerns going forward around SPED from CMSD will be raised with Andrew.  

M. Traum, provided the update on the qualitative classroom trends for all of the schools stating the fall visit focused on instructional with 20-minute observations. The team looks at three domains – classroom climate; purposeful teaching; and in-class assessment/feedback.  Highlights included: In all four schools, saw two areas with highest ratings were behavioral expectations with students and supportive learning environment. Megan concluded with an update on the instructional strategy area of the report noting the reports in the materials will go in to much more depth. 

M. Barbessi provided the update highlighting the following:

• Dr. Carol Young met with J. McBride recently on academics to see where we can help
• Met with Matt Smith at WH on compliance matters

There being no further business for the Breakthrough Public Schools Boards meeting, Sam Steinhouse and Danielle Eisenberg requested a motion to move into Executive Session with roll call at 6:44pm to discuss employment of an employee/or official matter. 

The Boards voted to conclude Executive Session at 7:14pm, followed immediately by adjournment of both meetings, also at 7:14pm.